P.O.W. to Power Broker, A Chapter Most Telling

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: February 27, 2000

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25—
In his tiny cubicle in the Russell Senate Office Building, in the lowest foothills of political power, a frustrated Navy officer wrestled with friends over what to do with his life.

It was 1979, and it was becoming clear that he would never make admiral like his father and grandfather. He had always dreamed of doing something great, of imprinting his name on the history books, but at age 42 he found himself with a stuttering military career and no base from which to go into politics.

On top of that, his personal life was a mess: Although he was still living with his wife, he was aggressively courting a 25-year-old woman who was as beautiful as she was rich.

That troubled period was perhaps the crucial turning point in John McCain's life, and the decisions that he made then started him on the course that he hopes will take him to the White House in January. In just a few years from those times of soul-searching in his office as Navy liaison to the Senate, Mr. McCain would have a new wife, a new home state and a bright new political star as president of the class of newly elected Republican members of the House of Representatives.

For a candidate running on character and biography, it is also an awkward time to remember: Mr. McCain abandoned his wife, who had reared their three children while he was in Vietnamese prisons, and he then began his political career with the resources of his new wife's family.

Yet although Mr. McCain's children and some friends were angry and disappointed with him at the time, they rally around him today. No candidate could be luckier in his choice of an ex-wife than Senator McCain, and he must be the only politician around who could cheat on his wife and divorce her and still get her support and her campaign contributions today. Even her friends rave about him.

The past is central to Mr. McCain's campaign, yet paradoxically his most remarkable metamorphosis, from a battered ex-pilot on crutches to a new Congressman, is among the least-known chapters of his storybook life. His best-selling autobiography ends with his release from Vietnam prisons, omitting everything afterward. Mr. McCain and his present wife, Cindy, both declined to be interviewed about that period for this article.

Yet it is that phase of Mr. McCain's life that underscores his contradictions and complexities, and that reflects most clearly the dogged, clenched-jaw determination that seems central to understanding him. Mr. McCain may come across as carefree, but friends and family members say his relaxed style camouflages a braiding of drive and ambition that enabled Mr. McCain to turn his life around after Vietnam and that, today, explains his campaign for the White House.

The story began when Vietnam released Mr. McCain and other prisoners of war in March 1973. He stepped off a military transport plane on crutches, an instant war hero, and quickly had a painful shock.

His wife, Carol, a tall, slim woman who had once been a model, had nearly died in a car wreck in 1969. H. Ross Perot, the businessman and advocate of prisoners of war, had paid for her medical care, but the injuries left her four inches shorter and on crutches, and she had gained a good deal of weight.

Mr. McCain was no great shakes to look at himself. He was still troubled by two broken arms, a broken leg, a shattered knee and bayonet wounds. Few thought that he could ever fly again, but he was desperate to try.

So he signed up for an excruciating therapy. Twice a week, for two hours at a time, he would lie in a whirlpool bath with water as hot as he could stand, and then the physical therapist (he called her his physical terrorist) would force his knee to bend.

''In physical therapy, you measure pain on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being maximum, off the wall,'' recalled the therapist, Diane Lawrence. ''Many times we got close to 10, and he would just put a hand over his face, and say, 'Honey, that's it.' And we would stop for a while.''

Obsessed with his dream of flying again, Mr. McCain embraced the pain and never missed a therapy session, and never was late, Mrs. Lawrence said. And he lit up the clinic with his jokes.

Another patient was Ann Jones, then a 12-year-old girl struggling to understand the implications of the words ''brain tumor'' whispered around her. Others at the clinic remember that Mr. McCain used to arrive early to cheer up Ann and later dropped by her home when she was dying.

The girl's mother, Sylvia, has not seen Mr. McCain since, but she chokes as she recalls her daughter's radiance at the visit. ''I'm a Democrat, and I'm not trying to promote John McCain politically,'' Mrs. Jones said. ''But it tells you something about the character of this man. There was nothing in it for him to do this. It was only kindness.''

After nine months of therapy, Mr. McCain took his flight physical and somehow passed. He could be a pilot again.

''He came in to see me, and he said, 'Honey, I made it,' '' Mrs. Lawrence recalled. ''He had tears in his eyes.''

Mr. McCain won a coveted assignment as commanding officer of the Navy's largest squadron, the Replacement Air Group in Jacksonville, Fla. This was Mr. McCain's first chance to command men (and a few women), but the squadron had a mediocre record and parts shortages meant that only half the planes were flyable at any time.